How to Create a Custom T-Shirt Design from Scratch?

Nothing beats originality and creativity when it comes to coming up with novelty and personalized gift items such as custom T-shirts. But, how do you create fantastic T-shirt designs from scratch? Do you need to be an expert graphic artist or shirt designer to create your own designs? In this guide, we will walk you through the 4 steps on how to create a custom T-shirt design from scratch, without being a designer or a fashion expert.

Find a design concept

First, you must have a design concept in mind already. What is the theme of your custom T-shirts? Will it be for an anniversary? Valentines’ day? Father’s day? Graduation Day?? Will the design be used to cater to chic girls, hippy guys or for the older generation?

Knowing all these design concepts will help you have a good starting point in creating your own T-shirt design. Once you know your theme, you can search online for some design inspirations. You can use Google Images or Pinterest to search for similar designs.

Use online T-shirt design maker

You don’t need to create your own design from scratch, because of the many online T-shirt design-maker websites that are available today. You can utilize free shapes, icons, vectors, and word-arts to create your own design. T-shirt design template generators such as Placeit and Spreadshirt have free design makers that allow you to be flexible in your designs even without the technicalities of being an expert graphic artist.

Using the design concept you created, you can easily put the elements in your chosen custom T-shirt design-maker software and generate creative ideas for your shirt print. Easily change colors, patterns, and typeface layouts using available shirt design makers.

An alternative but more novel way of doing this is by creating everything from scratch. You can use free and downloadable icons and vectors online, and put together your chosen elements into a single design using Photoshop.

Promote your designs

If you are designing custom T-shirts for business and entrepreneurial ventures, then promoting your shirt design is a necessary step. Attract more buyers by creating a shirt mock-up for your designs. You can do these custom T-shirt mock-ups by using online software like Placeit and Smartmockups.

While these applications have free versions, you can only do limited mock-up illustrations of your designs, such as flat lays and portraits. If you are looking to grow your own custom T-shirts business soon, it is wise to invest in a good design mock-up application with paid features.

Print your own design

Now that you already have a concept, a design, and a mock-up, it is high time to transform your imagination into reality. Print your own custom T-shirt design from scratch with your chosen shirt and wear it with pride!

If you can visualize it then surely you can print it! And if you can print it then you can definitely wear it! We hope that this guide will help you with your custom T-shirt projects. We hope this article also inspired you to create more personalized shirt designs for your own use and for future revenue as well.